26/10/2016

The ongoing presidential campaign in the United States stands out for its lack of civility and the vast differences between the candidates: the anti-establishment businessman Donald Trump on the Republican side and the polished politician Hillary Clinton representing the Democrats. The contest has exposed deep fault lines within American society and damaged the country’s global reputation. No surprise, then, that one of the few things Americans seem to agree on is that the campaign has gone on for too long. But soon it will be over. The question is: what comes next?

Polls suggest that Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, will defeat the controversial Trump. But polls are not to be confused with reality. After all, going into June’s Brexit referendum, most observers believed that a victory for “Remain” was a sure thing. More recently, Colombian voters rejected a peace accord that was widely expected to receive popular approval.

All of this is to say that, while a Clinton victory may be likely, it is no certainty. The only poll that counts is the one on November 8. Until then, all we can do is speculate.

Yet some predictions can be made with greater confidence. There is little doubt that the US will emerge from this election a divided country with a divided government, regardless of who is president or which party has a majority in either chamber of Congress. Neither Democrats nor Republicans will be able to realize their objectives without at least some support from the other.

But no one should think that the only divide in American politics is between Republicans and Democrats. In fact, splits within the two major parties are just as deep, with large and highly motivated factions pulling each to their respective extremes – Democrats to the left and Republicans to the right. This makes compromise on centrist positions all the more difficult to achieve.

The rapid resumption of presidential politics will undermine compromise further. If Clinton wins, many Republicans will assume that it was only because of Trump’s flaws, and they will judge her likely to be a one-term president. A country favoring change, they will conclude, is unlikely to keep a Democrat in the Oval Office for a fourth term. Many Republicans (especially those who deny the legitimacy of a Clinton victory) will thus seek to frustrate her administration, lest she be able to run again in 2020 as a successful incumbent.

Similarly, if Trump manages to win, most Democrats (and even some Republicans) will – after recovering from their surprise and dismay – make it their highest priority to ensure that he does not have an opportunity for a second term. Given how much of Trump’s agenda his fellow policymakers would likely find objectionable, governing would be very difficult during his administration.

In either scenario, it may still be possible to make progress in a few key areas. The next US government might manage to enact legislation to fund the modernization of America’s aging infrastructure, a policy that both candidates and many in Congress favor. It might also be able to cobble together a majority to reform the US tax code – in particular, lowering the high rate for corporations and raising taxes on the wealthy. There could even be some reform of health care, President Barack Obama’s signature achievement, owing to serious implementation problems with the current system.

But other issues requiring cooperation between Congress and the president are unlikely to be addressed any time soon. One is immigration reform, which is as controversial in the US as it is in Europe. Another is trade: because the domestic political environment makes policymakers wary of supporting positions with dedicated opponents, both Trump and Clinton oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though its ratification would benefit America’s economy and strategic standing. Meanwhile, America’s deficit and debt are certain to rise, as there seems to be little or no will to reduce entitlement spending.

The foreign-policy implications of the election are somewhat different, because, under the US Constitution, the president enjoys considerable latitude. While only Congress can officially declare war or ratify treaties, presidents may use (or refuse to use) military force without explicit congressional approval. They can also enter into international agreements other than treaties, appoint powerful White House staff, and change US foreign policy by executive action, as Obama recently did regarding Cuba.

Under Clinton, this discretion could translate into establishing one or more safe areas in Syria, providing more defensive arms to Ukraine, and taking a tougher line toward North Korea as it continues its nuclear and missile buildup. It is more difficult to guess what Trump would do. He is, after all, a political outsider, so no one knows how much of his campaign rhetoric would be translated into policy. Still, one could anticipate a Trump administration distancing itself from some traditional allies in Europe and Asia and standing mostly aloof from the Middle East.

What exactly will happen to America after the presidential election remains an open question. Though some outcomes can reasonably be expected, the only genuine certainty is that the 96% of the world’s population that does not vote in US elections will feel the effects no less than Americans will.

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Is the United States an “exceptional” nation? Well, the facts show that we are, but not for the reasons that you may think. Now that it is election season, we have all sorts of politicians running around proclaiming that America is the greatest nation on the entire planet. And just this week, Warren Buffett stated that “America’s great now — it’s never been greater“. But is it actually true? Is the United States still a great nation? I would submit that the numbers suggest otherwise. I love America, and in my opinion there is not much hope for us until we are willing to admit to ourselves just how far we have fallen. The following are 36 facts that prove that the United States is an “exceptional” nation…

#6 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.

#7 The average young American will spend 10,000 hours playing video games before the age of 21.

#8 Out of 22 countries studied by the Educational Testing Service, Americans were dead last in tech proficiency, dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency.

#9 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

#10 The percentage of wealth owned by middle class adults is lower in North America than it is anywhere else in the world.

#11 Almost half of all Americans (47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.

#12 It turns out that Americans are very good at locking people away in prison. At 716 per 100,000 members of the population, the United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire planet by a very wide margin.

#13 Approximately one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States.

#14 In 2014, police in the United States killed 1,100 people. During that same year, police in Canada killed 14 people, police in China killed 12 people and police in Germany didn’t kill anyone at all.

#16 There are more car thefts in the United States than anywhere else in the world by far.

#17 According to Fox News, approximately 70 percent of married men in the United States admit to having cheated on their wives.

#18 Americans spend far more on health care than anyone else in the world, and yet we only rank 26th in life expectancy and our entire health care system has been transformed into a giant money making scam.

#19 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug, and an astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.

#20 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 31 percent of all food in the United States gets wasted. In case you were wondering, that amounts to approximately 133 billion pounds of food a year.

#21 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

#22 A survey conducted by the Barna Group discovered that 77 percent of Christian men in America in the 18 to 30-year-old age bracket view pornography at least monthly.

#23 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

#2470 percent of Americans do not “feel engaged or inspired at their jobs”.

#25 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households. Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.

#29 According to a survey that was just released within the last 30 days, only 29 percent of Americans want to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood even after all of the shocking undercover videos that were released this year.

#32 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.

#33 Every single year, the United States has the largest trade deficit in the entire world by a very wide margin. But most Americans still don’t seem concerned that thousands of businesses and millions of good jobs have been leaving our country.

#34 As you read this article, there are 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job.

#35 We are supposed to have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but only 25 percent of all Americans know how long U.S. Senators are elected for (6 years), and only 20 percent of all Americans know how many U.S. senators there are in total.

#36 On average, we have been stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day since Barack Obama entered the White House.

Why has Barack Obama been releasing thousands of illegal immigrants that have been convicted of crimes back on to the streets of our cities? According to U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, more than 36,000 were released from custody in Fiscal Year 2013 alone. These individuals were actually convicted of committing crimes, and many of them went on to commit new crimes once they were released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In fact, Senator Grassley says that 121 of the criminals that were released during Fiscal Year 2013 were subsequently charged with committing murder. That means that more than 100 American citizens are now dead because of Obama’s foolish policies. Why is Obama doing this? He knows that one out of every five illegal immigrants has a criminal record, and he knows that many of these convicted criminals that he is releasing will go on to commit new crimes. What possible justification could Obama have for doing this to our communities? (Read More...)

An epidemic of rape is sweeping all across Europe, and yet European politicians seem almost completely unwilling to stand up and do something about it. In some major European cities, women are absolutely petrified to go out by themselves – especially at night. Things have gotten so bad that some people are now making up entirely new words to describe what is going on. Steve Quayle has labeled this crisis “rapeageddon“, and I think that fits. Things are particularly bad in Germany, which has welcomed more refugees than any other European country in recent years. If you can believe it, Germany opened the doors for 1.1 million “asylum seekers” last year. That is an astounding number, and it is starting to have dramatic consequences for German society. (Read More...)

Yes, illegal immigrants are responsible for lots of crime in this country. In recent years, nearly 1000 illegal immigrants have been convicted of committing sex crimes against children in the state of Texas alone. And as you will read about below, illegal immigrants have a murder rate that is 3 to 10 times higher than the general population. So anyone that suggests that illegal immigrants don’t commit more crime than the rest of us is simply lying to you. Unfortunately, even though we could prevent thousands upon thousands of violent crimes by securing our borders, the Obama administration refuses to do so and it has become very politically incorrect to even talk about this. Every single day, American citizens are being murdered and raped by people that should not be in this country and yet nobody is supposed to address this issue. No wonder our nation is in the process of self-destructing. The following are 10 horribly violent crimes that were committed by illegal immigrants… (Read More...)

Don’t let anyone tell you that crime is going down in America. All over the United States, rates of violent crime in our major cities are increasing by double digit percentages. Murders are way up, shootings are way up and rapes are way up. So what is behind this sudden spike in crime? In Baltimore, authorities are pointing to the racial tensions that were stirred up by the riots that erupted in protest to the death of Freddie Gray. But what about the rest of the country? From coast to coast, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in violent crime, and the economy is not even crashing yet. So what is going to happen when the next great economic crisis hits us, unemployment skyrockets, and people really start hurting? (Read More...)